Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate
by subversivegrrl
Summary: Another version of the Caryl reunion.


_the times when we were happy  
were the times we never tried_

"Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate" - Jackson Browne

* * *

They'd been fed six or seven times since the boxcar door had closed behind them. A hatch on the roof would open and a basket dropped in from the ceiling. It was the only reliable reference they had for the passage of time. Three days, maybe four.

They still kept a perfunctory watch, one by one, shifts delineated only by the watcher's ability to stay alert. The rest pursued restless sleep, heads pillowed on jackets and arms and each other as they huddled together to keep warm. Otherwise there was little to do to pass the time, and less to say.

A crackle of gunfire brought everyone to their feet, and in the dark they gathered in a panicked bunch. An explosion right outside rocked the train car, and moments later the door slid back on its tracks, and the beam of a flashlight played briefly over their faces. "Everybody out!" a low voice hissed. "Rick Grimes - get your people moving!" They stumbled to the opening and down the steps, unsure whether they were being rescued or led to slaughter.

Hands came out of the shadows, guiding them to the ground and pushing them toward other dim figures that crouched by the fenceline. Another volley of shots rang out, some pinging off the side of the car, and they found they still had the energy to run, and keep running, following their unseen allies past bodies on the ground, sliding through a gap in the chain link and out into the night.

When they slowed after long minutes of blind flight, Daryl chanced a look back in the direction he thought they'd come from, and all of Terminus was ablaze. Some black and twisted thing inside him thought, _that's right. Burn, you evil fucks._

He was tired, _so_ tired, and days of lying on the chilly metal boxcar floor (he could hardly call it sleeping) had left him feeling every day of his age, plus a good couple of decades more. With no activity to work out the stiffness and occupy his mind, the injuries he'd suffered at the hands of Joe's crew had settled deep into his body, and now it was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

They broke through the edge of the woods onto a mud road, the kind of one-lane track that led from nowhere to nothing, and the slight man in the lead called a halt to catch their breath and count heads. Daryl did his own count - Rick, Carl, Michonne. Glenn and Maggie. Sasha, Bob. Tara, Rosita, Abe and Eugene. All accounted for. There were a number of unknown faces that mirrored theirs, haggard and pale - probably the other captives they'd been able to hear from time to time. Someone else could tend to those people - he had his.

Rick sidled up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Keep your eyes open. I'll go find out the lay of the land." He approached the leader cautiously, and Daryl saw his head snap back in astonishment for a second before he reached out to meet the man's outstretched hand. They talked for only a minute or two before Rick headed back.

"Un-fucking-believable," Rick said quietly, as he got close. "Remember me tellin' you about the guy who helped me out in Atlanta? the one we got the guns from? Yeah. That's him. They got trucks a little ways further on - gonna take us to their camp."

"You trust 'im?" Daryl's vote was that they cut loose and get the fuck outta Dodge, but they weren't in too good a shape right now, and maybe the smarter choice was to keep with these people, who were well-armed and at least had been wise enough not to get caught by the lure of safety Terminus had seemed to offer.

"Well, I'll be honest - he was crazy as a shithouse rat, last time I saw him. Seems lucid enough now, but… he'll bear some watching. Yeah, I guess I trust him. Hell, he just saved our asses from some pretty bad shit, so I'll give him some leeway."

After the clusterfuck they'd fallen into at Terminus, Daryl didn't plan on taking his eyes off any of them.

* * *

The truck skidded to a halt, and a teenaged boy hopped up on the back to drop the tailgate. They began to pile out, disheveled refugees blinking in the glare of the second truck's headlights, and Abe enlisted Daryl to help some of the weaker folks climb down. One woman had taken a bullet through the thigh, and a couple of Morgan's men made a chair-carry to hustle her off to the tent they'd set up as a medic station. They'd obviously expected casualties, and there were already a couple of people being looked after under the tarp.

Abe and Daryl each slipped an arm around Tara's back to walk her over there - her ankle was pretty well torn up, and the run from the firefight hadn't improved it any. They settled her on an overturned bucket next to the tent to wait for someone to have time to see to her, and Daryl shrugged off Abe's suggestion that he stick around to be tended to himself, turning back to find Rick and talk over plans.

When he looked up she was just standing there, staring at him, her hands clutched around a box of bandages, and a white-hot bolt shot through him, half pure joy and half terror that he was hallucinating her. He froze in place, trying to make sense of it. It wasn't possible that Carol could be here, right in front of him, alive and whole and fucking _glowing _in the light from the lanterns.

She took one small, hesitant step toward him, the box tumbling unnoticed from her grip, and then she slammed into him, her breath a high keening note in her throat, and his arms were around her, holding her so tight to him he thought their skin might fuse together. A roaring filled his ears, and his legs sagged beneath him, dropping him to his knees.

* * *

He could hear people moving around him, muffled voices, and her hands raked through the snarls in his hair as she kissed the top of his head over and over, whispering, "_Thank god, thank god, thank god._" He buried his face in her belly and breathed in her unmistakable scent, cut grass and woodsmoke and sweat and sunshine. If he was having a hallucination, then load him up with another dose, because he never wanted to come back to a reality where she was gone again.

Then fingers were on his, prying his grip from around her waist, and she was crouched down in front of him, holding his hands and pressing her lips to his banged-up knuckles and smiling even as tears streamed down her face. "Hey, stranger," she said, touching his cheek. "We're making a scene, here - do you think we can stand up and maybe find someplace out of the middle of traffic, get you checked out?" He couldn't form words, could only keep looking at her, like she'd vanish if he stopped.

Abe squatted down next to them. "Don't think he's slept in days. Probably got some cracked ribs that could use wrapping, too. Hi, I'm Sergeant Abraham Ford, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Sergeant - I'm Carol. Looks like he hasn't been eating too well, either."

"Not to speak of - what little we got, he never took much of a share. And it's Abraham, or Abe, ma'am."

Their voices floated matter-of-factly over Daryl's head, and he pushed himself back and cleared the lump out of his throat. "Stop talkin' 'bout me like I ain't even here."

"Sorry, Pookie," Carol said contritely. Abe let out a bark of laughter, and Carol grinned as she stepped back to let him do the work of getting Daryl to his feet.

"So, the two of you…?" Abraham chuckled again, his amusement all out of proportion to the humor of the nickname, but Carol smiled at the big man's apparent delight. "'_Pookie_'? Shitfire. That's a damn' classic."

Carol had snugged herself up under Daryl's arm, walking slow and taking part of his weight, the whole thing feeling oddly natural, like she might have grown there tucked into his side. He wasn't hardly feeling woozy at all any more, but he played along like he needed the support, soaking up the warmth of her hand in the middle of his back; its solid, real comfort, like resting in your own bed after a long time away.

"You can shut your mouth any time now, man," he growled, and Carol snickered under her breath.

"He and I are _something_, Abe, although I don't think either of us knows quite what to call it." Daryl's back went rigid with surprise, hearing her say to this stranger what they'd never admitted aloud, even to each other, and her hand moved in slow, careful circles over his spine, stroking out the tension as she spoke. "All I know is I'm grateful to have him back in one piece, so I thank you for whatever part you might have played in that."

Together she and Abe got Daryl settled on a makeshift bench under the tarp, and Carol went to run back for the bandages she'd so unceremoniously dumped on the ground at the sight of him. She looked down in shock as his hand clawed painfully at her arm, and her heart squeezed in her chest as his eyes begged her not to disappear on him again.

"Hey, it's okay - I'll be just over there for a second, then as soon I get you patched up a bit we're going to my tent, and you're going to get some sleep. And tomorrow we can start to figure everything out." He sighed and leaned back, too tired to object, letting her sure, strong hands strip back his vest and shirt. She gently cleaned his hurts with soap and water and disinfectant, and prodded his bruised ribs, drawing first small grunts of discomfort from him, then a growing silence as her touches slowed and lost focus, her fingers tracing patterns of wonder over his skin. His hand came down on hers to halt her explorations, and she reddened and briskly set about binding his ribs with a few lengths of cloth.

When she was satisfied with the result she straightened, and his eyes caught hers, intent and smoky. Without a word she held out her hand, and he took it and followed her to the two-person dome tent she'd been assigned, she said, when she and Tyreese met up with Morgan's people several days before.

"Take off your boots before you climb in, I just got rid of the last batch of mud." Daryl snorted to himself - still mistress of whatever small domain she commanded, and she liked things just so. "You're going to have to lie catty-corner to stretch out - it's only space for two if one is a child, really," she explained ruefully.

The little tent was cozy - to put it politely - once the two of them got in and zipped up the door behind them, leaving their footwear and its coat of Georgia clay outside under the rain fly. It took some maneuvering for them both to get situated so they weren't poking each other with elbows and knees, and the resulting configuration left them lying awkwardly side by side, like a couple of pine planks.

After a few moments Daryl sighed and raised his arm, lifting the side of his blanket. "C'mere. You ain't comfortable like that, I can tell - scootch over here. Be warmer anyway."

She hesitated only for a second before she slid carefully up against his side, tossing her own blanket over both of them, and his arm came down to drape over her shoulder. "Mm, cuddly," she murmured.

"Yeah," he said quietly, and lay there listening to her breathing, slow and steady against his chest.

Something was wadded up uncomfortably under his hip, and he fumbled around one-handed until he could pull it out. He started to toss it off to the side, but Carol caught it from his hand. "I was looking for that earlier - have to get it to Rick in the morning." She shook out the tiny jacket, and Daryl's heart stuttered as he recognized it.

"Ty was taking her to Rick when I stumbled over you," she said softly. "I couldn't… they deserved to have their reunion without me there to complicate things. Tomorrow's soon enough. Tonight I just want… to be here with you. No apologies. No explanations. Just you, and me. Is that okay?"

That sounded pretty damn' near perfect to him, and he pulled her in close, laying his face against her hair, and finally let sleep take him down.


End file.
